Dr. Harpham's Blog on Healthy Survivorship

“You're not hopeful? The most important thing is hope! You need to have hope!”

The time has come to change that conversation. Don’t get me wrong: Patients do need hope. In fact, hope is the centerpiece of Healthy Survivorship. Here’s the thing: not just any hope, but healing hope—namely, hope that helps patients get good care and live as fully as possible.

It boggles my mind how little attention is devoted to exploring hope, such as what hope is, how hope helps, how to determine if specific hopes are healing, and how to nourish hope. It’s time to change the conversation to something more like, “What are you hoping for now? Are those hopes helping? How are you nourishing those hopes?”

On March 18, 2018, Curant House will release Healing Hope—Through and Beyond Cancer.This book of Illustrated aphorisms with succinct text offers healing hopes you can adopt, as is, or adapt to meet your personal circumstances and style. For example, while undergoing evaluations, the aphorism, “The best news is accurate news” helps me know what to hope for while undergoing evaluation: accurate new,--the news that helps us deal with what's happening.

[From the introduction]

Aphorisms helped save my life. Those short, powerful statements affected my thoughts and feelings by highlighting truths that helped me deal with the challenges of cancer…These aphorisms have been a gift to me. Now I’m passing them along to you with hope they help you forge and follow the best path for you today, tomorrow and every single day.

I wrote Healing Hope--Through and Beyond Cancer to help change the conversation about hope. This gift book for the survivors, caregivers and healthcare professionals in your life is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Please join me in changing the conversation about hope.